contemporary monkey

lots to say, not enough wood planks

Let’s say you’re trundling along to work on British Rail on a weary weekday morning, about 8:30, pressed up as politely as you can, to your like-minded human brothers and sisters, and you’re counting the stops to your final destination because, well, you can only hold your breath for so long.  Just as you’re quietly pronouncing judgement on the other sardines in the tin, out burst the words of wit from the mouths of one or two of your previously targeted victims.  Something random comes up in a conversation, like, “Why don’t they just do their job and fire me?”  Or possibly, “Standing at 30 mph will be the fastest I move all morning”.  But more probably, “Is your hand supposed to be there?”

And what happens, do you write these things down?  No, you don’t.  And you know why you don’t write these trophies down?  Because you’re not an artist (you’re on the 8:30 after all, while the whole of the artist-class is still happily dreaming during that avoidable part of the day).  Writing down, or even painting down, life’s found easter eggs is the job of the curious and enterprising artist….once they wake up, that is.

Take, for example, Bob and Roberta Smith, who are in this case, one artist/person.  Already the Human Resources people would have a problem with him…her…whomever, so the evidence of pure artist-hood is unmistakable.  Bob and Roberta Smith paint signs of anecdotes and slogans heard from the rest of the world.  Bob (to avoid confusion and lengthy copy, let’s use the masculine gender for reference) isn’t even a very good sign writer - he makes every mistake in the graphic design bible, such as not enough contrast between foreground and background, using enough type fonts to employ a London agency creative staff for ten projects, and the use of unwanted, cheap and not very “brand friendly” materials (banged up 2×4 planks, joined together).

He’s prolific, Bob, with his capturing the moment on oil and wood. At Beaconsfield Art Gallery, Bob’s finished up a year-long effort of sign-painting and sloganeering.  Beaconsfield is located in the Nine Elms part of London, and in their specific case, also physically supporting the 8:30 British Rail every weekday, along with every other late-running train that travels over the gallery.  Beaconsfield is 50% gallery, 50% cafe, filled with 100% wise-cracking artist customer base.  After grabbing a coffee, and feeling the sneer of the natives, one must endeavor to find the artist’s work.  In a first floor, disused theatre, about the size of a grammar school venue for a Christmas play, Bob’s made nine panels nailed (probably with rusty nails) to the wall, which are all part of a larger written story.  The artist has copied the content from a Guardian columnist who specializes in the tennis scene .  Steve Bierley was, at the time, on a somewhat alien assignment, covering something he normally doesn’t cover: art.  In his interview with the artist Louise Bourgeois, he summed up the difference between his familiar subject of sport, and art.  “You look at sport, you think about sport.  You look at art, and you think about yourself.”  A nice gem.  This sloganeering media might have some legs after all.

In another room which Beaconsfield has labeled “the Arches”  because it inhabits a trestle’s arch under the rails, Bob appears to be having a boot sale.  About a hundred signs are planted at every angle, on various made up pedestals, including staged on ladders, chairs, desks, and anything else happened to be in Bob’s way at the time.  Each sign itself is really not much to get frothy about, or even particularly noteworthy.  But painting slogans on lots of signboards, displaying them all together in a ramshackle under-the-tracks, hideout is something else.  Audibly layered with discordant and random, percussive music, played by Bob of course, the physical space you’re in becomes the art.  If there were comfy sofas and bar tables, this would be a vibey place for an after-work drink-up.  Maybe all misunderstood artist should think this way.  If an art piece means absolutely nothing to 102 % of the world, just make loads of similar pieces and amass a treasure chest of glory.  Even if it doesn’t work, think of all the cool party places we’ll have.  When I win the lottery, I’m going to buy one of these poor man’s cafe and art bar.  Forget the diamonds and flashy cards, think of all the strange and weird friends you could hang out with in your new art space?

As an artist - as a hungry, wanting, miserable-existing, low-rent-living, desperately seeking appreciation artist - wouldn’t you want to have maximum exposure so that any one of us buyers and lovers of art might catch on that you, well, exist?  More philosophically, if you have a showing of your work, and it lasts only one day, do you, or the art itself, really exist?

In the November issue of Art Forum (the leading industry publication, but really the advertising brochure for the art gallery world), we find ourselves an artist committed to producing multiple pieces, only to show them for one, single, here today, gone tomorrow, 24 hour period.  This mysterious exhibit, called Dia de Frutas y Nubes Negras (Day of Fruits and Black Clouds) showed (past tense) a series of empty wooden crates devised by Gabriel Sierra, hanging about the whole of the otherwise empty art space.  His inspiration for the empty crates are taken from a broader idea, the success of which is not worth debating, mostly because nobody saw them.  It is, however, worth pointing out, and reflecting upon, and possibly even to remedy the situation for, the myriad and colourful ways contemporary artists seem to find for lodging bullet firmly in foot.

Gabriel Sierra: Artist for a Day

What’s more, for our intrepid artist above, the one day opening wasn’t enough of a operational hurdle.  The show was held in an area between the centre of Bogata, Columbia and a nearby slum.  For all of us clairvoyant enough to be there on this day of magic, the signage on the outside of the artist-run studio was nearly non-existent (hmmm,  “artist run” you say, perhaps a hint for what went wrong).  Above the art space doorway was one of the artist’s pieces signaling to all passers-by for what lay inside; like a flag for the secret tribe of the world’s least ambitious carpenters.  This was art determined to be ignored.

But let us not cast stones in the house of glass.  Perhaps our artist friend could do with aid from my favourite subject,  “Mathematics for Artists”.  For this second chapter, I thought to help the poor lad out with a bit of logical instruction, in the hopes that other artists might learn from a brethren’s mistake.

KEY TO GRAPH

P = Population. Think of this number as people, animals, even plants that might want to see your show.  You want this number to be a large one.

T = Time. This is a number working against you.  Against all of us actually. This number will always increase, and rarely, if ever,  go backwards (even in the artist world).

The horizontal line has two important points: “o” for open, and “c” for close.  The distance between the two is the duration of your show.  If measured in days, you want this to be a big number; certainly bigger than one, as exemplified by our dauntless friend above.

The vertical axis has two points as well.  The lower one, “n” = nobody. This “n” happens to everyone, even a Jeff Koons or a Damien Hirst.  There has to be a nobody before the show opens; otherwise, it wouldn’t need opening.  The second point, “m” correlates with your new goal, and represents the multitude, or mob, if you like.  As time moves forward, your goal is to get more people to see your work.  That’s why you do, what you do.  This unpleasant, but indispensable “strategy” will greatly benefit your future, and help us out as well.

The third point on the horizontal axis, “r” represents the point in time that critical reviews are published in art magazines.  Reviews have nothing to do with adding more people to your visitor list.  In fact, nearly all reviews surface in the public pool of influence after shows have been closed.  Nobody knows why this is, but keep in mind that it doesn’t matter.  Critical reviews are to the artist, what a spatula is to an athlete: completely useless.

Commit this graphical image to memory and your success is nearly guaranteed.  All you have to do is produce original, thought-provoking art (a mathematical lesson for a later time).

“…It provides a means for understanding the contemporary world, and, potentially, for making it a better place.”  You’d be mistaken if you thought this ambitious phrase was lifted from an exhibition programme at a contemporary art gallery, or an expensive brochure at a museum of modern art.

It would be a good guess though.  People in the art world certainly throw that kind of thing around like it’s part of the badge, and it sounds like a focused aim of contemporary art.  Those That Know Best proclaim that contemporary art confronts us with purpose, and questions our angles and viewpoints in daily life.  Contemporary art tackles the tough problems with a smack on the head and makes us think about our choices.  It’s supposed to change our perception, make us think differently, get us to move in a new direction.  The position of contemporary art in our lives, however, is being usurped by a a new leader.  Ladies and Gentlemen of The Arts and Letters, Distinctive Guests, and Biennial Buddies, you’ve just been lapped.

The quote above was taken from the About Us section of The Design Museum’s web site.  Contemporary Art, over the last century, has had its chance to make friends and influence enemies.  Instead of addressing the everyday man, however, it chose to address the marginal few - in many cases, the very few - those that have bags of money, or the simple gullibility to create a market in a vacuum.  Contemporary Art has created it’s own No Girls Allowed Club.

Most of us have a bigger commitment to design than we do contemporary art.  Not that we haven’t tried the latter.  But design is more affordable, available, and intelligible.  It solves problems, makes us aware of ourselves, forces us to act, makes our heart beat faster.  It becomes part of our personal statement to our fellow Earthlings and probably beyond.  Design is our individual and collective branding.  It builds network-like organisation across imaginary lines of religion, geography, politics, and arguably solves a lot of the world’s problems right there.  Two parliamentarians, or members of Congress, could easily throw verbal blows across the room, but they could just as easily be seen later in the day exchanging applications on their iPhone, or talking about the design of the city’s new symphony hall.

Contemporary art, on the other hand, struggles to get noticed.  I often ask this question of people I know or just meet: Do you understand contemporary art?  Close to everyone says no, but they certainly mean to comprehend it one day.  How many countries, religions, industries have that apologetical clause at the end of of a statement, they mean to.  It’s like flossing your teeth, or joining a gym.  We know it’s the right thing to do, and we’ve been meaning to for the longest time, but…

Contemporary Art goes out of its way to make enemies, to confound, confuse, berate, annoy, mis-fire, even put to sleep.  Very few of us are buying what they’re selling.  However, most of us can talk about Ferraris, iPods, Prada, great CD covers, well thought out gardens, art deco skyscrapers, the latest hair style, cool night clubs and modern restaurants with contemporary takes on French cuisine.  We can go on about skateboard graphics, impressive graffiti, luxurious handbags, sleek running shoes, even Italian inspired salt and pepper shakers.  And  we don’t have to own or experience any of them.  We’d be happy as Larry aspiring to a level of just talking about it over pints, or browsing over shelves.

Jennifer Northrop is the Director of Communications and Marketing at America’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.  Cooper-Hewitt is the American equivalent to the British Design Museum, only more thorough in history (they seem to like collecting there).  She had this to say about the 2009 National Design Awards, and the effects of design in our lives.

“Design is intriguing to the public,” says Jennifer Northrop, director of communications and marketing at the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, “because design isn’t art.”

Ouch!

Helen Chadwick's "Cacao"

An abundance of milk chocolate is evident in a room before I arrive at the top floor.  While I climb the stairwell of the New Art Gallery in Walsall, a foul, stale dairy scent warns me to stop walking and flee back downstairs.  The odor becomes more acute and recognizable, while a popping and slurping sound soon becomes evident.  Coincidentally my arrival at the top floor via the stairs has timed exactly with the lift opening in front of me, where I witness the faces of two visitors contorting from the instantaneous attack on their senses.  The installation is supposed to be about food, but I was hoping for something a little more palatable.  Why is it, by the way, that all art using food as a source commits itself to the rotting, diseased phase of its lifetime?

“Pot Luck: Food and Art” was on exhibition, with the entire floor flipped into a surrealist’s kitchen.  Toward the rear of the room, the reverberating fountain called “Cacao” is a six feet wide pool of milk chocolate (the cheapest chocolate by the way, which no pastry chef would dare touch) pulsing and bubbling like the inside of a lava lamp.  The dairy from the milk chocolate has been flowing for seven weeks now, in a not very refrigerated room.  Other than the hanging salami rain storm (remarkably with no whiff of decay), the chocolate goo pool is the only live food in the building.  Most of the exhibits use other media to represent food, which I suddenly realised was the best idea.

This flowing sludge was among a handful of ideas blended at the intersection of art and food.  The curators, Cynthia Morrison-Bell and Anthony Key, offer the notion that food is an easy lever for making sense of contemporary art because the viewer doesn’t require subjective knowledge before “getting it”.  Is that the answer to getting one’s head around contemporary art, by way of a more readily available medium?  Isn’t that what television tries to do?

Art Galleries everywhere aim to lead a broader audience to the front door, and using a common language sounds fundamentally correct.  Does that mean that art for blokes should include pints of beer?  Do we need an installation of “Feminine Art in the 21st century: Knock-off Handbags”?  Somehow this seems too easy, and probably truly insulting, to get Joe and Jane Public in for a quick lesson on contemporary art (although, if anyone would like to make the attempt to explain art to me and my friends with beer, count us in as beta testers).  We should probably be made to give art a good attempt if it’s meant to be inspirational and confrontational.  Galleries could always save the beer for goading us into the building in the first place.  And chocolate on the way out.